


Stay

by rosweldrmr



Series: Balance Series [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Questionable Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosweldrmr/pseuds/rosweldrmr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter had been the one to come to her. He showed up at her front door in a v-neck and smiled like he already knew she would go with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivorygraves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygraves/gifts).



> This takes place in the [Balance](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3580167) universe. I recommend you start with that first and then read the rest of the [Balance Universe](http://archiveofourown.org/series/230973) fics. These are all written as bonus fics for [Ivy](ivorygraves.tumblr.com). You are my bae, my gurl, my homeslice and midnight fandom partner. Let's go on a road trip together!

\--

Peter is the one who taught her to picture a string of red yarn. He told her to pick an occasion when she’d successfully channeled her powers. And the night Stiles was missing springs to mind. She hadn’t found him at Eichen House, but she’d Heard ‘Eichen House’ so clearly that night.

So she uses it. She closes her eyes and visualizes it. A red string that extends from her heart to Allison’s. Like her, it can pass through the black veil that separates the living from the dead.

She doesn't know how Peter knows it will work, only that it does. So she casts her Sight out, Sees the red yarn exit her chest. But she has no body in this place, no hands to pluck the string.

Undeterred, she imagines her arms extending from the white, glowing vapor that she imagines her soul to be. Fingers that form a hook. She strums the wire, Feels the vibration of it in her chest. She Listens to the slow whine as the note dies.

She waits for a response. A reciprocal chord she hopes Allison will make. Like words, like sound, it will vibrate through the string, rippling the veil as it passes through.

But she gets no response. Nothing comes from the dark. No sound. No sensation. No connection.

“Ugh,” Lydia grunts and shoves her hands through her messy hair. It's late and she been at this for hours already.

She hates being trapped here with him. She hates that she's dependent on him. She wants to just forget about this. Go back to Derek's loft and read some books.

But the way he'd exploded last week, the way his eyes flashed a murderous blue when he told her to _get out_ still gives her nightmares.

It was the first time in months the voices in her head spoken with perfect clarity.

 _Dangerous_ , they warn. _Run_ , they scream.

She’d fled, the whispers of their fear echoing in her head. She hadn’t been back since that night.

Peter had been the one to come to her. He showed up at her front door in a V-neck and smiled like he already knew she would go with him.

“She’s not responding,” Lydia tells him when he raises an eyebrow in question at her outburst.

“Give it time,” he says a smiles. “We have all the time in the world.” And the way he says it makes her skin crawl. And suddenly, he’s too close. Locked in his apartment, it’s the middle of the night, and Peter Hale is looking at her like he’s hungry.

“I should go,” she says, feeling the dread that usually accompanies his presence in a room well up from inside her.

“Stay,” he croons. And there is an echo in the room, because Lydia hears it over and over.

_Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay._

They voices cry in unison. She wonders how he can make them speak for him. How he was able to reach beyond the veil and inhabit her body. Why he made her fall in love with him when she was still sixteen and thought a breakup was the end of the world.

“It’s not real,” Lydia whispers and closes her eyes. She has to remind herself, sometimes, that Peter isn’t that boy she wanted to kiss her on her patio. She doesn’t’ know how he does it, but sometimes when she looks at him, she sees his younger self. Like a trick of the light, she has to rub her eyes and look away.

“Real is a subjective term,” Peter responds.

She doesn’t flinch when he touches her face. She thinks that makes her strong. She doesn’t realize it makes her _his_.

She imagines a red string spanning the few feet of shrinking space between them. She can feel the tug of him in her chest. She’s always been able to sense him. A side effect of whatever he did to resurrect himself, she thinks. But she’s the one who’s suffering. She’s the one who can’t reconcile the boy she would have walked through fire for with the man who burned to ashes in the woods.

“You’re not him,” she whines, trying to turn her face away.

But he keeps a firm grasp of her chin and lifts her face. And the draw of him, the connection that’s always there flares to life. When she finally looks at him, his teenaged self is looking down at her.

“I can’t be anyone else,” he says and Lydia loses the will to fight. She’s tired and frustrated and nothing in her life is going the way it should. She’s going to go insane someday, and her friends are all going to leave her and go off to college soon. Derek doesn’t want anything to do with her.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she confesses. She doesn’t know how he does it, how he manages to be young and still kiss her the way he does. This was always a fight she was going to lose.


End file.
